Wednesday, November 13, 2013

I read that line this morning in an article praising the glory of
entrepreneurship and I thought, that really describes my life now. I
mean, no one ever would have promoted me to CEO. I wouldn’t even have
been considered a good ‘diversity candidate’. (A diversity candidate,
I’ve been told, is one who makes it slightly easier to tell the rest of
the finalists apart.) And in addition to that pesky second X chromosome
that I carry around, the typical CEO is in the neighborhood of a foot
taller than me.

All things considered, it was just easier to start a company and give
myself the title, although I have to admit that at the time, no one
else wanted it.

On a more serious note, even self-made women CEOs experience
well-documented challenges. Try googling “women founders getting venture
capital”, and you’ll see what I mean. It’s just a fact that many of the
places where you’re expected to ‘pay your dues’ have a sign hanging on
the door that says ‘No girls allowed’. (Not literally, of course, but
savvy women have no trouble reading between the lines.)

After mulling these things over for a while, the whole line of
thinking began to bother me. Like I normally do when I need a reality
check, or just someone to bounce my ideas off of, I went to Mark, my
Vision Former.

Let me take a moment aside to explain that term. My company created Teamability®,
a completely new technology that analyzes and organizes teams based on
each person’s innate affinity for serving a specific organizational
need. In the language of Teamability, the name of each capital-R ‘Role’
in a team suggests the organizational influence the person will most
effectively exert. For example, if you have a grand vision, and have
even started a company and gotten it off the ground, you are probably a
Founder or a Vision Mover…or perhaps both. If so, you haven’t lived till
you’ve worked with a top flight Vision Former, who is your perfect
complement and counterbalance.

Now back to the story. I said to Mark, ‘Maybe I just have never paid
my dues like people think they have to, and maybe it’s the dues-paying
which is why women are frustrated in typical organizations.’ And he
disagreed.

One good thing about having someone whose Role complements yours is
that you not only expect the occasional disagreement, you welcome it. It
means that by the time you work it out (which you always do) you will
both truly and lastingly agree on what makes the most sense.

“Really,” he said, “there’s been plenty of dues-paying for both of
us.” He went on to say that the ‘no glass ceiling’ phrase – while catchy
– isn’t entirely true, and that there’s a glass ceiling for everyone
who isn’t a winner in the ‘lucky sperm club’, i.e., born into money
and/or power. (And of course we know that those dues are sometimes
extracted in other, even less desirable, ways.)

The Vision Former continued: “There’s no quick or easy fix for women
(or men) who are frustrated and want to move up in typical
organizations. Entrepreneurship can be an escape route, but (using our
startup experience an example) look at how crazy you have be in order to
take it! Also, the fascination with entrepreneurship plays into the
fantasy that life is better and all will be wonderful at the top. It
inherently supports an economically hierarchical model of happiness that
really doesn’t work for everyone.”

Role-fit is the first step to happiness on the job, because a sense
of meaningful contribution becomes intrinsic to one’s activity. After
that, happiness is increased when an organization (including one that
you own) understands and facilitates Team-fit and Role-pairings. Further
down the road, building a team (or a town, or a society) where each
person understands and practices Role-respect will open the door to
group happiness. All along the way, Coherence gains in strength and
influence, and Teaming comes into full bloom.

According to StatisticBrain.com, 44% of new businesses fail within 3
years, and in 76% of the cases, the top reason is incompetence (45%),
followed by unbalanced experience and lack of management expertise
(30%).

“It’s the people,” said the VF, “not the business.”

Encouraging people to be entrepreneurial when they don’t have the
‘equipment’ for the task (or any way to know whether or not they have
it, or where to get it) is not so different from a football coach moving
a quarterback to the D-line. It makes no sense, and the outcome is
liable to be ugly.

There can be a big advantage in starting and/or being in an
entrepreneurial company. It is the opportunity (maybe) to discover who
you are and what you really like to do, and it comes from having to
serve the organization as chief-cook-and-bottle-washer for a while.
People on the big corporate ladder rarely have that much diversity of
experience. There is a way to discover who you are, and how you ‘team’
most effectively and happily, without risking the security of your
family or future.

Your response to discovering your own Teamability could just as
easily be “Now I know I would hate (or love) having my own business,” as
“Now I know why I hate my job – I quit,” or “Now I know why I LOVE my
job; no thanks, I’d rather not go into management.”

There is the glass ceiling of reality, and a glass box of our own doing. The important question: is yours opaque or transparent?

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

The wonderful thing about the social web is how easy it is to make new acquaintances into friends. Often, all it takes is just helping each other. So that's how this guest blog happened. I met Erin Osterhaus in the usual online manner. She had a need for opinions, and I'm never short of them. In this case she was asking for predictions, which I was only too happy to offer. And here she is, returning the favor with a guest blog:

The HR Department of 2020: 3
Bold Predictions

The human resources department will disappear in a matter of
years. All HR functions will be taken over by software or outsourced. At least
that’s what some are saying.

They’re wrong.

Yes, software is changing
how HR operates. But instead of spelling the the demise of the human resources
function, experts predict these changes will allow HR professionals to grow. Software Advice interviewed
industry analysts and HR practitioners to better understand what will change
and why, as well as find out how HR professionals can prepare.

Prediction 1: In-house HR
will downsize while outsourcing will increase.

While this prediction may seem somewhat, well, predictable,
the reasons experts give for the change might surprise you.

Brian Sommer, an industry analyst and the founder of
TechVentive, explains that new technologies--many of which allow for employees
to participate directly in HR processes through self-service systems--will
drive the shift to leaner in-house HR departments. As he says, “Many businesses
are going to get a lot of capability done by better technology, more
self-service and the employee doing a lot on their own.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Janice Presser, CEO of The Gabriel
Institute, predicts many transaction-heavy HR jobs will be outsourced
entirely to agencies or specialists, saying, “Entry-level HR jobs, as they
currently exist, will all but disappear as transactional tasks are consigned to
outsourced services.”

The HR department that remains will need to reposition itself
as a strategic partner within the business. In fact, SHRM’s 2002 report, The
Future of the HR Profession predicted the trend toward leaner, strategy-focused
HR departments 11 years ago.

More recently, an Economist Intelligence Unit report
highlighted the need for C-level management to partner with HR departments as a
prerequisite to drive growth. The experts agree, and most emphasized HR’s need
to increase its strategic value to the business--or else. Dr. Presser says,
“This includes the ability to make accurate projections based on understanding
the goals of the business and using metrics that describe more than lagging
indicators, such as how long it takes to fill a job or the per-employee
training spend.”

Companies like Yahoo and Best Buy recently ended their remote
work programs. These companies are the exception, not the norm. Undoubtedly, HR
will have to tackle the challenge of managing a growing remote workforce. Luman
points out that companies will need “to leverage employees where and when they
are most productive and impactful”--even if that means they’re halfway around
the world.

But managing employees from afar isn’t a skill you can pick
up on the fly. Dr. Presser cautions that, “The trend toward remote workers is a
growing challenge to managers who are not effective in managing people at a
distance.”

To help HR departments and line managers adjust, automation
will play a large part in successful remote management. Wim de Smet, CEO of
Exaserv, predicts that “New technologies will be used to analyze the work
production instead of the working time. Results will become more important and
business will expect HR to be producing more result-driven performance
analysis.”

Preparing for 2020

With so many changes on the horizon, what can current HR
professionals begin doing now to prepare? The experts endorse three key
tactics: keep learning, be active in your field, and take risks.

“Get ahead of the curve,” Dr. Presser advises. “Realize that
many of today’s ‘best practices’ evolved under very different business
conditions, and may well become obsolete within this decade. Learn everything
you can about your industry, your competitors, and pending legislation that
affects your business operations. Most of all, define yourself as a
businessperson and act accordingly.”

Finally, Luman encourages HR professionals to find their own
voice and be active. As he says, “Network inside and
outside of your field. Blog, communicate, read and help others achieve success.
If you are not outside of your comfort zone, you are stagnating.”

Erin Osterhaus is the
Managing Editor for Software Advice’s HR blog, The New Talent Times. She focuses on the HR market, offering advice to industry professionals
on the best recruiting, talent management, and leadership techniques. For the
full article, click here.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

A week or so ago, I shared a rather dense article about
sub-nuclear physics with Jack (TGI’s co-founder, Dr. Jack Gerber), and then we
connected on Skype. I said, you know, this is what we were talking about
fifteen years ago. He agreed, saying he’d always meant to write it up. (We work
that way. He’s a Curator of the most brilliant sort, and he knows how to pull
information together in exactly the right way. Then I inject the vision and
launch it into the future.

The following day, via email, he mentioned new thoughts on
the subject, and wanted to speak with me before he started writing. (This is a
great thing about having such a seasoned Curator on the team. He can access
huge amounts of knowledge, so he checks to be sure that he is delivering the
specific bits you asked for.) I was really eager to hear him because I’d had a
few new thoughts myself.

We often speak by phone as I’m walking home at the end of
the office day (or the beginning of my ‘night shift’ – take your choice.) This
time, Jack jumped on the topic so suddenly that I was momentarily confused. I
had been expecting a ‘next step’ in our prior conversation, but he seemed to be
on completely unrelated path. Or was I just not thinking straight?

Nothing is quite as scary as thinking you’re not thinking
straight. But never one to panic, I stopped making judgments and just listened
a little harder. Soon I realized that although we were still on the subject of
the article, we had each come away from it with a totally different ‘take’ on
why it was important and relevant to our work!

There are three ways that people respond to this sort of
disjoint. First, they may become annoyed, or even angry. Second, they may get
curious and just ask. Third, they may get connected at a higher level. It isn’t
that one way is inherently better or worse. They’re just different – and here’s
what can learn from this:

If you get annoyed, that’s just evidence that you don’t like
your vision tampered with. The upside is you hold your own in a disagreement.
The downside might be that you miss a lot of value coming from your ‘opponent.’

If you get curious and wonder where the other person is
coming from, make sure that after you ask the question you wait around for
their answer. You can benefit a lot that way, even if what you get isn’t what
you thought you wanted to know.

While it sounds like getting connected should be the right
answer, it isn’t always. If you are ‘going along to get along’, it deprives you
of having your voice, and also deprives the other person of hearing it.
Connecting in parallax is much more effective.

Here’s what I mean by connecting in parallax. A person’s two
eyes work together in seeing the world from slightly different points of view,
and this enables the brain to perceive depth by putting the two views together.
Depth perception doesn’t exist before the two views merge into the third
collective view.

So how do you apply this to your work?

First, remember to simply listen. And to listen simply. That
means listening without the distractions of your environment, your electronics,
and your own thoughts.

Then try to give your colleague total respect by closing
your own ‘eye’ and viewing the interaction completely and solely through
theirs. The value of this exercise can be enhanced when you understand their
Role and how to respect it. With some practice and care, you will be able to
‘become them’ for a time.

Finally, take time to appreciate
their contribution before modifying
it with your own. It will help you remember why you listened to them in the
first place.

If you are curious about what happened next with Jack and
me, I’ll tell you. We discovered that he had made one discovery, and I had made
another. But most importantly, through the power of parallax, both of them
became ours.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

It doesn’t matter whether you’re driving an
innovation through a multinational company, or just trying to lose ten pounds.
I learned them well, after many missteps. Rules are rules. Here they are:

It
doesn’t have to all be done at once. There is a writing standard I followed
a long time ago (when almost all I did was write books) of doing five new pages
a day. What I learned was that doesn’t add up to 35 pages a week or even 25 so
you may as well be realistic and double your overly optimistic time schedule. (This
particularly applies to losing weight.) There are good reasons for not rushing
things.

It will
go better if you don’t try to control it. A book, like many other projects,
needs to develop a personality of its own. It has your voice, but it’s an
individual. Actually, this need it will have to ‘breathe’ is going to be
responsible for some of that extra time you’ll need (from the first rule). If the
change involves other people, especially employees, your kids, your spouse or
friends, this goes double. And what makes you think it would be better if you
did control everything?

The more
people involved, as long as they are truly invested in the outcome, the better
the results. My current book is, of course, a team effort. My earlier books
were too, but the team was formed to get the book out, not before. Investment
takes time – and trust, respect and faith. If you have that, whatever the
change you are trying to make, it will be more likely to succeed.